International Human Rights Law

Hundreds of Mozambicans were killed and thousands made homelessrecently by Cyclones Idai and Kenneth. Almost immediately, there were reports of a sadly familiar story: women being forced to trade sex for food by local community leaders distributing aid.

Globally, international organisations appear to be grappling with the issue more seriously than before. Yet reports about sexual exploitation keep coming. How does the aid community strategise to protect women’s safety in disaster situations?

Over the past 15 years, I have done research on sexual exploitation of displaced women in Uganda and Colombia. I have also worked with a variety of humanitarian organisations on accountability and legalisation. Through this, I have identified the factors necessary to bring justice to the victims of predatory aid workers.

Sexual exploitation must be recognised as a real and widespread problem. There must be staff and management accountability. Transgressions must be sanctioned through disciplinary or penal measures. But there are also major dilemmas that need to be understood and tackled by governments, agencies and, most importantly, local communities.

Sexual exploitation in aid

The sexual exploitation of disaster and conflict victims is a global – and longstanding – phenomenon. Over the last 25 years, there have been radical changes in the standards of global public morality around the conduct of personnel working for international organisations and NGOs when vulnerable adults and children are involved.

Nevertheless, the willingness to see sexual exploitation as an inherent feature of the international community’s intervention to bring development, humanitarian aid or peace has been much slower to evolve.

It was only 24 years ago that UNHCR issued guidelines on sexual violence and refugees that expressly mentioned international refugee workers as being implicated in sexual violence against refugees.

The sexual abuse of vulnerable women and girls in several African countries by international aid workers was recently described as “endemic”. It was also noted that perpetrators easily moved around the sector undetected.

These have involved aid workers and peacekeepers, as well as local aid workers and government employees.

In my research on refugees, accusations concerning “sex for resettlement” registration surface regularly. I found these to be frequent while working on refugee resettlement in Kampala 15 years ago. Despite the UNHCR’s promise to reform, similar accusations keep resurfacing, most recently in Kenya. The time has come for the international community to seriously debate the power mechanisms embedded in the resettlement process that enable sexual exploitation to fester.

What will fix the problem?

The first step is to organise accountability.

Humanitarian accountability first emerged as a concern in the 1980s. It was institutionalised in the 1994 Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief . The 1996 Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda was a defining moment.

That report resulted in several sector-wide initiatives. Five years ago efforts were made to streamline these in the revised Core Humanitarian Standards.

Throughout this period, sexual exploitation has been considered the worst possible behaviour humanitarian workers can be guilty of. But it has not been clear what constitutes exploitation and in which relationships it takes place. The lack of a definition, the unwillingness to articulate and enforce robust norms for professional behaviour and the absence of effective complaint mechanisms and protections for whistle-blowers have contributed to a culture of impunity for predatory behaviour against aid recipients.

Early policy responses to sexual exploitation were concerned with reputational issues. But over the past 15 years the humanitarian sector has seen a flurry of institutional initiatives to grapple with this specific issue. The effort to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse is led by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee.

The aid sector is now engaging in “safeguarding exercises”. These emerged after the Oxfam scandal in Haiti. The organisation was seen as failing to act on sexual misconduct by staff in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, and then to have attempted a cover-up.

Safeguarding includes all actions by aid actors to protect staff from harm (abuse, sexual harassment and violence) and to ensure staff do not harm beneficiaries.

This broad definition represents both a welcome recognition of the scope of the problem and an opportunity for a comprehensive approach. But it also creates some new challenges. Three are particularly worth noting.

The challenges

Who gets a voice: There has been vocal concern about the lack of inclusiveness in how safeguarding is practised. Critics have noted that a safeguarding industry was hatched with little attention to local and national context or participation. There is a view that safeguarding is yet another Western-centric practice. I think this critique is true. But it also creates a dilemma: should global norms about sexual exploitation in international aid be up for local negotiation?

Regulation and criminalisation. In recent years, there have been calls to regulate foreign aid actors more robustly. This is understandable. Aid actors have operated with a great deal of license and even impunity under the humanitarian banner. But drawing up new laws also creates problems. This is particularly true in a context where African civil society generally is under pressure from new restrictive laws that curtail their activities.

Localisation: Since 2016 there has been a significant focus on the localisation of aid. The Charter for Change focuses on contracting, resource allocation, transparency and communication. It highlights the importance of not undermining local capacity. The process is generally painfully slow and a shockingly small percentage of international aid funding is actually allocated to local actors.

At the same time, there is a persistent call for international actors to do, control and know more about what goes on locally to limit corruption, incompetence and abuse. This call comes partly from media in donor states addressing taxpayers, but also from watchdogs within the sector.

This is also the case for sexual exploitation. In its report, Human Rights Watch demands that “international partners, particularly the UN, should ensure greater oversight of the conduct of local officials during the distribution of humanitarian aid”. This will not come for free.

The question is how a balance can be found between control and localisation – and who gets to determine what this balance should be.

“(a) Was the process of decolonization of Mauritius lawfully completed when Mauritius was granted independence in 1968, following the separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius and having regard to international law, including obligations reflected in General Assembly resolutions 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960, 2066 (XX) of 16 December 1965, 2232 (XXI) of 20 December 1966 and 2357 (XXII) of 19 December 1967?;(b) What are the consequences under international law, including obligations reflected in the above-mentioned resolutions, arising from the continued administration by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of the Chagos Archipelago, including with respect to the inability of Mauritius to implement a programme for the resettlement on the Chagos Archipelago of its nationals, in particular those of Chagossian origin?”

ICJ answered the first question in the negative, and concluded that the decolonization process of Mauritius had not been lawfully completed at the time of Mauritian independence. And the court held, on the second question, that the United Kingdom was under an obligation to bring to end its administration of the islands as rapidly as possible. This post will provide a brief factual background regarding the Chagos Archipelago, as well as a succinct legal analysis of the world court’s reasoning and ultimate conclusions.

Where is the Chagos Archipelago and what was its relationship to the United Kingdom and Mauritius prior to Mauritian independence in 1968? Between 1814 and 1965, the Chagos Archipelago was administered by the United Kingdom as a dependency of the colony of Mauritius. In 1964, during a time when the United Kingdom was contemplating decolonizing Mauritius, the United States expressed an interest (to the United Kingdom) in establishing a military base on one of Chagossian islands, Diego Garcia. In 1965, the United Kingdom concluded the co-called Lancaster Agreement with the representatives of the colony of Mauritius. Through the Lancaster Agreement, the U.K. and Mauritius “agreed in principle to the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago from the territory of Mauritius. This agreement in principle was given on condition that the archipelago could not be ceded to any third party and would be returned to Mauritius at a later date, a condition which was accepted at the time by the United Kingdom.” (para. 171). After this Agreement, the United Kingdom detached the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius. In 1965, the United Kingdom also concluded an agreement with the United States, allowing the latter to build a military base on Diego Garcia. By 1971, all of the inhabitants of Diego Garcia were forced to relocate from the island by the United Kingdom authorities and the United States proceeded to build a military base on the island. Mauritius (without Chagos Islands) obtained independence from the United Kingdom in 1968; according to a former Mauritian Prime Minister, Mauritius had no choice but to agree to the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago prior to independence. As of today, the United States still operates a military base in Diego Garcia (the U.S. – U.K. agreement of 1965, allowing the U.S. to operate a military base in Diego Garcia, has been extended). The Chagossians have been dispersed, since the early 1970s, in Mauritius, the Seychelles, and the United Kingdom. By virtue of U.K. law, they have not been allowed to return to the Chagos Archipelago.

How did the ICJ reason in this advisory opinion, and how did it reach its ultimate conclusions? First, the ICJ held that it had jurisdiction over the dispute because the request from the General Assembly for this advisory opinion constituted a “legal question” pursuant to article 65 of the court’s statute (para. 58). Second, the ICJ held that, in its discretion, it should not decline to exercise jurisdiction over this case. The court reasoned that it had enough factual information to answer the legal questions asked (paras. 69-74), that it was not for the court to decline jurisdiction based on the argument that the court’s opinion would not assist the General Assembly, as this is for the General Assembly itself to decide (paras. 75-78), and that it was not precluded through the principles of res judicata from rendering this advisory opinion (because the U.K. and Mauritius had arbitrated a slightly different dispute before an arbitral tribunal, and because the U.K. and Mauritius are not the same parties in the present request for an advisory opinion) (paras. 79-80). Moreover, the ICJ rejected the argument that it should decline jurisdiction because the request for an advisory opinion would force the court to settle a territorial dispute between two states, the U.K. and Mauritius, which had not both consented to the court’s jurisdiction over this dispute (paras. 83-91). Instead, the ICJ held that “the purpose of the request is for the General Assembly to receive the Court’s assistance so that it may be guided in the discharge of its functions relating to the decolonization of Mauritius.” (para. 86).

After answering the jurisdictional challenges, the ICJ turned to the merits. The court examined the right to self-determination under customary law, and whether this right existed under customary law in the late 1960s, at the time that the U.K. decolonized Mauritius. According to the ICJ, General Assembly Resolution 1514 of 1960 “represents a defining moment in the consolidation of State practice on decolonization” (para. 150) and “[t]he wording used in resolution 1514 (XV) has a normative character, in so far as it affirms that ‘[a]ll peoples have the right to self-determination.'” (para. 153). Moreover, according to the court, “[b]oth State practice and opinio juris at the relevant time confirm the customary law character of the right to territorial integrity of a non-self-governing territory as a corollary of the right to self-determination.” (para. 160). Thus, the ICJ concluded that the right of self-determination was a part of customary law in 1968, at the time of Mauritian independence. Next, the court concluded that the people of Mauritius, through the Lancaster Agreement of 1965, did not freely consent to the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago (para. 172), and that the decolonization of Mauritius was thus not lawfully completed, as it did not respect the relevant principles of self-determination. In light of this conclusion, the court found that “the United Kingdom’s continued administration of the Chagos Archipelago constitutes a wrongful act entailing the international responsibility of that State” (para. 177) and that “the United Kingdom is under an obligation to bring an end to its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible, thereby enabling Mauritius to complete the decolonization of its territory in a manner consistent with the right of peoples to self-determination” (para. 178). Moreover, the ICJ concluded that because “respect for the right to self-determination is an obligation erga omnes, all States have a legal interest in protecting that right” and “while it is for the General Assembly to pronounce on the modalities required to ensure the completion of the decolonization of Mauritius, all Member States must co-operate with the United Nations to put those modalities into effect” (para. 180).

Why did the court (likely) decide the way it did, and what does this all mean? First, it is important to note that the court’s decision was virtually unanimous: the judges unanimously determined that the court had jurisdiction; by twelve votes to two, the judges decided to comply with the request to render the advisory opinion (Judges Tomka and Donoghue against); by thirteen votes to one, the judges reached their substantive conclusions (Judge Donoghue against). Second, as Marko Milanovic has argued, the outcome of this case may demonstrate how important the framing of the legal question is (“by avoiding the use of the term ‘sovereignty’, Mauritius and the GA defused the likelihood of the Court dismissing the case as involving a bilateral dispute”). This may explain, in part, why the ICJ judges ultimately reached the conclusions above – that the narrow and clever wording of the advisory opinion request allowed the ICJ to reach particular legal conclusions without having to address issues of U.K. and/or Mauritian sovereignty. Third, I agree with Marko Milanovic that the ICJ’s discussion of the most fundamental and difficult issue – whether the right of self-determination was part of customary law in 1968, at the time of Mauritian decolonization – was too brief, too rushed, and insufficiently developed in terms of legal analysis. Fourth, the ICJ did not explain how the people of Mauritius could have freely exercised their right to self-determination (when they consented to the separation of the Chagos Archipelago): was the U.K. at an obligation to conduct a popular referendum in Mauritius on this issue, or were there other modalities of self-determination available in 1968? Fifth, it is clear that this outcome is a big loss for the U.K., as the ICJ most clearly stated that the Mauritian decolonization was not lawfully completed and that the U.K. was under an obligation to end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago immediately. Sixth, it may be argued that the outcome of this case is a loss for other countries, such as the U.S., as the ICJ concluded that all states were under an obligation to co-operate with the United Nations to ensure the completion of the decolonization of Mauritius (does this mean that the U.S. is now under an obligation to dismantle its military base on Diego Garcia?) Seventh, it may also be argued that the ICJ missed another opportunity to pronounce itself on the contours of the right of self-determination, like in the Kosovo Advisory Opinion. The legal question in this advisory opinion concerned the right to self-determination directly; instead of quickly concluding that the right was part of customary law in 1968, the court could have included a more detailed legal analysis of the content and modalities of the right of self-determination under customary law.

It remains to be seen how the U.K. (or the U.S.) will react to this advisory opinion, whether the U.S. will be willing to negotiate the relocation of its military base in Diego Garcia, and whether the people of the Chagos Arhipelago may be allowed to return to their home land.

On 28 February 2019, the European Court of Human Rights gave its judgment in Beghal v United Kingdom, in which it unanimously held that there had been a violation of Sylvie Beghal’s right to respect for private and family life, enshrined in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”).

The case concerns the power of police to stop and question travellers at ports and airports in Britain without the requirement for reasonable suspicion.

This post will provide a short description of the facts of the case and briefly set out the legal arguments put forward by both sides. It will then argue that, as some areas of the current terrorism legislation remain largely untested (e.g. power to seize sensitive electronic information outside the journalistic context), and with the introduction of new powers in the recent Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, Beghal is unlikely to be the end of the story on no-suspicion stop and question powers.

The facts in Beghal

The applicant, Sylvie Beghal, is a French national living in Leicester, United Kingdom. On 4 January 2011, she arrived at East Midlands Airport following a visit to her husband, Djamel Beghal, who is in prison in France for terrorism offences. Upon arrival, she was stopped under the infamous Schedule 7 of the UK Terrorism Act 2000, a piece of counter-terrorism legislation which gives British police and immigration officers the power to stop, search and question passengers at international points of border-crossing (ports, airports and international rail terminals).

Such powers are to be exercised for the purpose of determining whether the person “appears to be concerned or to have been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism” – and can be exercised without any suspicion of involvement of terrorism. If someone fails to co-operate he or she is deemed to have committed a criminal offence and could face up to three months in prison, a fine or both.

After being stopped, Sylvie Beghal was taken to an interrogation room and given the opportunity to call a lawyer. She was searched, and her luggage was searched too. She was told that she was not under arrest, but would be questioned under Section 7. She told the officers that she would only answer questions after her lawyer arrived, but the lawyer took a few hours to arrive and the officers started the examination. Thereafter, she was asked a number of questions about her family, her financial circumstances and her recent visit to France. She refused to answer most of those questions. She was later charged with wilfully failing to comply with a duty under Schedule 7.

Legal arguments: was the interference ‘in accordance with the law’?

The fact that there had been an interference with Ms Beghal’s right to respect for private life was not contested by the UK Government. The question, therefore, was whether such an interference was “in accordance with the law”.

The applicant argued that it was not in accordance in the law, because the powers under Schedule 7 were not sufficiently circumscribed and did not provide adequate safeguards against abuse:

The absence of any requirement for objective grounds for suspicion, or even subjective suspicion, meant that an officer could exercise powers based on no more than a hunch, which in turn gave considerable scope for extraneous factors and motives – such as biases and ingrained stereotypes – to influence how an officer selected individuals to stop and question.

In Gillan and Quinton v UK,sections 44 and 45 of the 2000 Act (which set out a power to stop and search exercisable in relation to any person anywhere in the street), hadalready been held not to be in accordance with the law despite having a narrower purpose and scope of application, and despite not allowing as intrusive a search as the one permitted under Schedule 7.

The Code of practice in force at the time of the applicant’s examination did not tell examining officers how to determine whether the exercise of Schedule 7 powers was proportionate, nor did it require them to keep to a minimum all interferences with fundamental rights.

Although individuals were entitled to consult a solicitor, that did not prevent arbitrary selection in the first place, and in any case officers were permitted to interrogate a person in the absence of their solicitor anyway (which is what happened to Sylvie Beghal).

There was no requirement for officers to explain the reasons why a particular individual has been selected for examination, and no obligation to record such reasoning either.

Because the lawful exercise of the powers was not conditional on any suspicion (reasonable or otherwise), the scope for using judicial review proceedings to challenge the decision was extremely limited.

The Government argued the following:

The power was focussed on entry and exit points to the United Kingdom, which were the first line of defence against the entry and exit of terrorists, and as such they provided a unique opportunity to target checks where they were likely to be the most effective.

There were sufficient effective safeguards in the operation of the scheme to meet the requirements of legality. The Government cited a list of factors demonstrating the existence of such safeguards, such as the restriction on the duration of the interview and on the type of search, the availability of judicial review, and the continuous supervision of the scheme by an Independent Reviewer.

There was no evidence that the powers had been used in a racially discriminatory fashion, and such a use was expressly prohibited by the Code of Practice.

The Court found that the legislation in force at that time had not been sufficiently circumscribed, nor were there adequate legal safeguards against abuse. In particular, people could be subjected to examination for up to nine hours and compelled to answer questions without being formally detained or having access to a lawyer.

To reach this conclusion, the Court considered the following factors:

Geographic and temporal scope of the powers: The Court found that the wide scope of application of Schedule 7 (applying at all ports and border controls) did not in itself run contrary to the principle of legality. Consideration was also given to “the very real threat that Contracting States face on account of international terrorism” and the need to control international movement of terrorists.

Discretion afforded to the authorities in deciding if and when to exercise the powers: The existence of a requirement of reasonable suspicion is an important factor in assessing the lawfulness of a power to stop and question or search a person, but the lack of such a requirement does not in itself render the exercise of the power unlawful. The Court gives Member States a wide margin of appreciation in matters relating to national security, and noted that there was clear evidence that the Schedule 7 powers have been “of real value in protecting national security”. Interestingly, the Court seemed to make a case against the requirement for reasonable suspicion, by pointing out that such a requirement could actually lead to terrorists avoiding the deterrent threat of Schedule 7 “by using people who had not previously attracted the attention of the police (“clean skins”)” and noting that “the mere fact of a stop could alert a person to the existence of surveillance”.

Any curtailment on the interference occasioned by the exercise of the powers: Individuals could be subjected to examination for up to 9 hours, without any requirement of reasonable suspicion, without being formally detained, and without having access to a lawyer. The only ‘curtailment’ at the time of the applicant’s examination was therefore this 9-hour time limit.

Possibility of judicial review: The Court found that the absence of a requirement of suspicion made it difficult to challenge the lawfulness of the decision to exercise Schedule 7 powers.

Independent oversight of the use of the powers: The use of the powers is subject to independent oversight by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. Although the Court noted the Reviewer’s important role in providing unbiased, scrutinised oversight, it found that such oversight was not capable of compensating for the otherwise insufficient safeguards applicable to the operation of the Schedule 7 regime (noting, for example, that a number of important recommendations had not been implemented by the UK Government).

Do recent changes to Schedule 7 powers make Beghal v United Kingdom moot?

The writing had been on the wall for the most extended of Schedule 7 powers long before the Court’s judgment in Beghal v United Kingdom. The powers were facing a number of legal challenges and, in 2013, the UK Supreme Court raised serious concerns about the potential for “serious invasions of personal liberty” due to a lack of safeguards.

As a result, in 2014 significant changes were made to Schedule 7 with the aim of reducing the potential scope for interference with individuals’ rights while retaining operational effectiveness. This included limiting the maximum period of interview from 9 hours to 6 hours, providing for specific training for officers, and providing for specific protection for information benefiting from attorney-client privilege or journalistic material.

In the 2016 Miranda judgment, although the exercise of the Schedule 7 stop power in relation to Mr Miranda was deemed lawful, the Court of Appeal found that the stop power, if used in respect of journalistic information or material, was incompatible with Article 10 of the ECHR (freedom of expression) as it was not prescribed by law. Again, judges warned that Schedule 7 appeared too arbitrary and lacked safeguards.

It would be easy to dismiss Beghal v United Kingdom as moot: Britain has changed its law since the relevant events occurred, hasn’t it? Indeed, throughout the judgment, the Court confirms it has only had regard to the Schedule 7 power to examine “as it was at the time the applicant was stopped” (see paragraph 110).

The UK Government is likely to argue that any flaw in the legislation has been remedied already, but the rest of paragraph 110 tells another story: “[The Court] has not considered the amendments which flowed from the Anti‑Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act2014 and the updated Code of Practice; nor has it considered the power to detain under Schedule 7, which has the potential to result in a much more significant interference with a person’s rights under the Convention” (emphasis added).

This warning wasn’t lost on former Independent Reviewer David Anderson QC, who noted on Twitter: “the end of paragraph 110 contains a significant sting in the tail, flagging for future attention the use of more advanced no-suspicion powers not used in this case, e.g. to detain and to download devices”.

In 2017, Muhammad Rabbani, the director of campaigning group Cage, was prosecuted after refusing to hand over the passwords of his mobile phone and computer when stopped by police at Heathrow Airport.

The case escalated to the Court of Appeal, with Rabbani’s lawyers relying on the Miranda precedent to argue that the protection owed to journalistic material applied to other categories of protected information. This argument was dismissed by the Court of Appeal, with Lord Justice Irwin noting that the Miranda decision was “expressly and narrowly” centred on Article 10 of the ECHR and freedom of expression for journalism, and that it was “by no means self-evident that identical or (or even similar) considerations arise in respect of other categories of excluded or special procedure information”.

Following the Court of Appeal decision in May 2018, Rabbani said he would appeal the decision at the UK Supreme Court. In an era where phones and computers give individuals the means of carrying a large number of potentially sensitive documents, the case raises important questions regarding the right to privacy and the limits of data mining of electronic devices in the name of counter-terrorism.

Regulating the retention of electronic data downloaded from devices is something that was indeed on the radar of Britain’s terrorism watchdog. In his most recent report dated October 2018, then Independent Reviewer Max Hill QC notes a sharp drop in the number of port stops: from 60,000 in 2012 down to approximately 16,000 in 2017. This remarkable trend is caused no doubt by multiple factors, “which must include better capture of passenger manifest data across the UK, and better use of targeting techniques, even though reasonable suspicion is still not required for a stop”.

But the numbers reveal something else: the proportion of detentions resulting from such examinations is rising. In 2012, around 1% of examinations led to detention. In 2017, a staggering 10.4% of examinations resulted in detention. Although this is not a particularly worrying pattern, and it might in fact simply be a result of rising efficiency in data capturing and targeting, the report nonetheless warns that “important questions remain, including the ongoing issue of satisfactory rules governing the retention of both biometric data taken from individuals and electronic data downloaded from their devices”.

New legislation enacted in February 2019: Schedule 7-type powers for non-terrorist ‘hostile acts’

Defining ‘terrorism’ is always a tricky exercise. The 2018 Novichok poisonings in Salisbury, and the question of the perpetrators and their origin, or the question of state sponsorship, have inflamed the issue of what terrorism means – should counter-terrorism legislation include powers to deal with non-terrorist acts that nevertheless threaten the nation?

In reaction to this, the new 2019 Act provides a separate legal regime to deal with “hostile acts”, i.e. non-terrorist acts which threaten national security, threaten the economic well-being of the United Kingdom in a way relevant to the interests of national security, or constitute an act of serious crime. Schedule 3 of the 2019 Act provides for stop and question powers that the Government explicitly notes are “closely modelled on Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000”.

We expressed concern that Schedule 3 provides for interference with the rights to private life, freedom of expression, and property, yet the powers it gives are dangerously broad. In particular, the definition of ‘hostile act’ is extremely wide and there is no threshold test of suspicion required before a person is detained and examined. In its response, the Government acknowledges that the definition of hostile activity is broad but states that “it is required to encompass the spectrum of threats currently posed to the UK by hostile states, which includes espionage, subversion and assassination”. We would be grateful for more clarity of the Government’s position on the necessity of this ‘no suspicion’ power.

The committee suggested the insertion of a threshold of reasonable suspicion and a requirement that the exercise of the power must be necessary and proportionate. This fell on deaf ears, and the suggested amendments were not included in the draft bill (now the 2019 Act).

Conclusion

In conclusion, Beghal v United Kingdom is unlikely to be the end of the story in terms of challenges to counter-terrorism legislation. With the creation of new stop and search powers, and the unresolved question of the legality of the more advanced powers (such as the power to detain and search electronic devices), Britain would benefit from strong, independent oversight of its counter-terrorism legislation. Shame the position of Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation has been vacant since October 2018, with no indication as to when the next ‘terrorism watchdog’ will be appointed and despite repeated calls from former reviewers.

Every place has symbols and icons that makes it unique. In some cases, they can be architectural wonders, as the Eiffel tower, or natural beauties, like the Niagara Falls. Independently on which symbol or icon is used, we all refer to them to describe the wonders of that place and to explain some of its problems.

In Venezuela politicians use iconography to create bonds between them and their followers. This practice has been very common in the past 20 years, and the ruling party is its main user. In fact, Venezuelans are used to this practice, and for that reason they are not discussing the newest symbol: the schoolbag.

For the Academic Year 2018-2019, President Nicolas Maduro ordered to deliver 4 million bags to students who attend to public schools. In an official event, the Minister for Education indicated that students in the public sector represented 80% of the active student population (approx. 7.2 million students). Even though there is no official data regarding the exact number of schoolbags distributed per state and that the help did not cover the entirety of the population, at least 55.6% received it; therefore, it is possible to see them in every corner of the capital.

The main beneficiaries of the help were children. Kids like Jose Liborio, who was using his bag in the subway while moving around Caracas accompanied by his grandmother. However, he is an exception to the rule. The main users of the bags are grandparents, siblings, and other relatives who need the bag to carry personal objects or just the food the bough that day. For that reason, for some people the bag is a symbol of misery and poverty. They see it as the symbol of parents who do not have the money needed to buy back to school supplies and books. The symbol of children that for several reasons have abandoned school. The symbol of broken families because thousands of Venezuelans have migrated to pursue a better life. A symbol of a population who patiently waits for the government charity to survive in a country that every day is stepping away from achieving the sustainable development goals.

And with this panorama, one could ask, what is the type of development that Venezuela has? What is the type of development that it should have? For me answers are very simple. In this moment Venezuela has no development, and precisely because of that, we have a great opportunity to discuss the type of development that Venezuelans would need to have.

In my opinion, Venezuelan development agenda should start with SDG 4: ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. However, to achieve it we need coordinated action to ensure good health and wellbeing (SDG 3), zero hunger (SDG 2), and that teachers are receiving a decent salary for their work (SDG 8). But, above everything, Venezuela needs strategic alliances as indicated in the SDG 17.

The government should promote alliances not only with foreign institutions, but also with domestic organizations. Sustainable development can only be achieved with the participation of the majority of the stakeholders. The inclusion on local institutions will transform the situation from within, and produce bottom-up solutions.

Moreover, as soon as Venezuelans start participating, they will stop being passive receptors of aid. They will be active creators of a more peaceful and inclusive society (SDG 16) and in doing it, Venezuelans will be able to develop and transform those bags in symbols of hope and prosperity.

As the issue of denuclearization in the interest of global peace and security continues to be of pressing concern to the world, there is a growing tendency to prioritize such matters of international import above concerns around the problematic human rights records in countries like Iran and North Korea. However, concerns regarding the human rights situation within a country’s borders should not be relegated to the backburner while negotiating deals regarding international peace and security owing to two broad, interconnected reasons.

First, egregious violations of human rights within national borders – by their very nature – cut across these national borders and thus merit international anxiety. In particular, repressive regimes foster instability, dissatisfaction, violent conflict, and frequently, radicalization. While it is tempting to call for an emphasis on America’s “softer” side in response to human rights concerns beyond American borders, it may be prudent to acknowledge instead that the way a country treats its people can be of consequence to polities the world over. Accordingly, if Azadeh Moaveni’s conclusion that any substantial improvement in Iran’s human rights situation demands larger, structural reforms from within is accurate, any gains consolidated by finalizing deals such as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action are necessarily of limited value for international peace and security. In fact, regimes that mete out systematic repression to their own people, such as Iran and North Korea, are “inherently destabilizing”; their volatile internal dynamics, posited against the background of nuclearization, present huge risks to international security, which merit due investigation, analysis and response. In such a scenario, allowing horrific internal conditions to play second fiddle while negotiating sweeping arrangements for global peace is to miss the forest for the trees.

Secondly and more specifically, acknowledging that both these concerns are relevant to the all-pervasive ‘international security’ problem could also be helpful in selling negotiations and engagement with an adversary state such as Iran to domestic constituencies. By emphasizing its potential to raise Iran’s profile in the world order and bring economic relief within Iranian borders, President Rouhani, for instance, garnered some measure of domestic support for a deal which – on the face of it – seemed like a massive concession of sovereignty. In an increasingly polarized international order, where domestic forces operating within one of the negotiating parties may view the very act of approaching the negotiating table as an admission of weakness, acknowledging that there are costs to peace and security on both sides of the coin may be a wiser move.

Two years after the UN promised to do better, the victims of the UN cholera epidemic in Haiti are still fighting to make the organization keep its promises. On December 1 2016, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon publicly apologized to the Haitian people for the UN’s role in causing a devastating cholera epidemic that has claimed more than 10,000 lives and infected more than 800,000 people since 2010. Promising to right the UN’s wrongs in Haiti, Ban Ki-moon rolled out a $400 million plan to control cholera and provide assistance to victims.

Yet eight years into the epidemic and two years since this grand promise the UN is still refusing to keep its promises or honour its legal obligations. The UN’s response to cholera has always been one of charity, never a program of the justice that it is tasked with promoting globally. Ban Ki-moon, choosing his lawyers’ advice over the UN Charter’s directives, carefully avoided any admission of legal responsibility. None of the plan’s promises were enforceable by the victims. Two years later, in a textbook demonstration of the importance of accountability and the rule of law, none of the promises have been kept.

The UN had promised to place “victims at the centre of the work” of its $200 million victim assistance plan, and to consult with them in developing the package. It promised to consider not only community-based assistance but also “payment of money to the families of those individuals who died of cholera.”

Victims took the UN at its word, and prepared for the consultations. They met in groups to study and discuss the pros and cons of different approaches. They participated in victim committees and consultation training sessions, and brought the nuanced discussions home to their villages for more discussion.

In the meantime, the UN’s limited fundraising efforts yielded limited results, so the promised material assistance project was replaced with a “pilot consultation” in a single municipality, Mirebalais. The UN’s public comments on victim assistance discussed only community projects, with individual compensation apparently off the table.

The UN declined to include the victims who had prepared for the process in the Mirebalais pilot. Instead, a few selected cholera victims were included in larger focus groups of local political, religious and community leaders. The consultation process went ahead without transparency as to how it was being conducted and without clarity as to how these victims were selected. Reports from those meetings indicate that individual compensation was not presented as an option, and that the voices of the cholera victims – who contracted the disease in the first place because they were too poor to afford clean water – were predictably marginalized among the discussions of the leaders, who arrived with their own agendas for community development.

This obviously flawed process produced the conclusion it was designed to produce: that Haitians wanted community projects, not individual compensation. The UN now intends to expand on this “success” in other heavily affected communities. So the victims need to keep fighting for justice. As many of these victims often state, “it is not for the wrongdoer to decide what is justice for the victim.”

On the anniversary of the introduction of cholera, cholera victims in the town of Mirebalais—where the epidemic started–commemorated the day by organizing a requiem Mass to memorialize those who died from the disease. Victims then marched to the former UN base that recklessly discharged cholera-laden waste into Haiti’s largest river system, to lay flowers near the river.

To this day, the UN cholera continues to kill and sicken Haitians. Beyond the ongoing threat, the long-term consequences persist for those who have already been sick or lost loved ones. Crushing burial costs, loss of livelihoods, death of breadwinners, and ensuing accrual of debts has devastated those who already struggled to meet their basic needs.

This latest commemoration of cholera victims, so many years since the outbreak, is the utmost demonstration of victim perseverance. Despite the devastating economic impacts and struggles that victims face, they have continued to mobilize for justice. Together with organizations like the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and MOLEGHAF, they come out to protest month after month to remind the UN of its obligations to provide justice and reparations to those who have suffered so much from cholera. Victims have also filed claims through the UN’s legal process as well as a class action lawsuit in New York through their legal representatives the BAI and the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH). On Human Rights Day in 2015, they delivered over 2,000 handwritten letters to the UN’s peacekeeping headquarters in Port-Au-Prince. In 2017, victims told their individual stories in a powerful video message to the UN.

Victims are not alone in rejecting this effort at replacing justice with charity. In June, over 100 US Congressional leaders called on the Secretary-General to ensure a just response to Haiti cholera victims. The following month an open letter signed by 60 human rights organizations worldwide to the UN Secretary-General, including Amnesty International and the International Service for Human Rights, opposed what they saw as problematic consultations of victims. It criticized the UN’s adoption of a charity-based as opposed to rights-based model that appeared to abandon the individual payment approach.

Charitable community projects are not a substitute for the remedies that cholera victims are entitled to by law, and victims are not giving up the fight. The UN’s grand promises to cholera victims two years ago will only be effective if it actually listens to victims, respects their perspectives and allows them to influence the development of policy. As the UN undertakes to review its efforts in Mirebalais, it is not too late to recognize that justice will only be served when victims are truly placed at the centre.